A review by neilrcoulter
The Peoples of Middle-Earth by Christopher Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien

5.0

And here we are: the final volume of the History of Middle-Earth. For this last entry, [a:Christopher Tolkien|9533|Christopher Tolkien|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1235772383p2/9533.jpg] goes back to the [b:Lord of the Rings|33|The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1405130818s/33.jpg|3462456], showing his father's development of what became the Appendices. I remember after finishing the four volumes of the History of the Lord of the Rings (volumes 6-9 of the History of Middle-Earth) feeling that it didn't seem quite finished. The History of the Lord of the Rings felt weighted heavily to the side of [a:Tolkien|656983|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1383526938p2/656983.jpg]'s beginning of the story, with a rushed, incomplete account of the finishing. So I was happy to go back, in Volume 12, to the finishing touches of the Lord of the Rings. Also, it happens that there are a lot of fascinating details in the writing and revising of the Appendices (though others in my family did not always share my excitement about the ways that Tolkien translated Hobbit names into the published form).

The middle of the book, with a long section on phonological changes in Quenya and Sindarin, was a bit of a slog for me. Interesting as a reference for Tolkien's linguistic creation, but not as engrossing (for me at this time, at least) for simply reading start to finish.

I'd hoped that the end of the book would include some kind of reflections from Christopher, looking back over his own journey through the decades he's worked on his father's unpublished material. I would've enjoyed even a brief Afterword, something of a "Here's what it feels like to be at the end of this project." But no, there's nothing like that; the book just ends. In some ways Christopher has shown himself to be rather unsentimental (though one might suggest that the entire History project is thoroughly sentimental). But the last section of the book brings me back to what attracted me to Middle-Earth to begin with: not phonology, geography, or calendars, but story. My interest in digging deeper into Tolkien's creative process got me through many pages of detail about minute changes to maps, the logic behind linguistic choices, changes in the numbers of days in each month for different peoples of Middle-Earth, and so forth. But I first loved Middle-Earth because of the stories. And so I think it's beautiful that the History series concludes with two unfinished stories--one from after the death of Aragorn, and one from earlier, when the Numenoreans were landing on the western shores of Middle-Earth. I liked seeing that even at the end of his life, Tolkien himself was pushing out the borders of the storytelling, finding new places to learn about and new narrative perspectives on the history of his subcreation.

This has been a wonderful journey through the development of Middle-Earth. Parts of the books I'll go back to occasionally, and I do think I will someday read through the entire series again.